Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

4, Harvard law school expels star student for "holocaust denial"CAMBRIDGE, Mass (AP)What began as a minor citation in a scholarly work ended up causing Noor Aljiem to be expelled from Harvard Law School. Aljiem, a third-year student majoring in criminal law, submitted a paper that examined Nazi travesties of criminal law, and received an .A. grade.She was set to graduate Summa Cum Laude at the end of this semester, but the university law school was forced to reconsider her status when criminal law professor Alan Dershowitz criticized Njiem.s scholarship. .She could have used any number of sources for her paper,. Dershowitz explained, .but for some reason, one of her citations mentioned the book Did Six Million Really Die? by imprisoned Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel..

.I admit there were misunderstandings,. Aljiem says. .But I did not actually quote the book. I quoted a German legal reference that happened to be cited in the book. Also, the citation was only one of three hundred miscellaneous citations in my paper, and I was commended for the thoroughness of my research. Furthermore the author of Did Six Million Really Die? was not Ernst Zundel, but Richard Verrall, whose pen name was Richard Harwood. Zundel merely helped Harwood to get the book published..

Saul Rubin, Dean of Harvard Law School, submitted the matter to an academic review board. .The German legal reference was obscure, and Ms. Njiem could have citied it directly, or through some other work,. Rubin says. .That fact that her paper.s bibliography mentioned Zundel.s Did Six Million Really Die? is indicative of carelessness or maliciousness. Either way, we were forced to take Ms. Aljiem.s status under advisement..

A series of further misunderstandings ensued, at the end of which the review board ruled against Aljiem. Harvard Law School was forced to revoke her academic status, which had the effect of expelling her.

.Zundel.s book has been outlawed in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and most of mainland Europe,. Dershowitz explains. .To take a hate-filled reference that has been outlawed in so many nations, and cite it in a scholarly work, strikes me as more than a coincidence..

Aljiem, who is a Muslim, asked the law school if it would expel a student for citing Salman Rushdie.s The Satanic Verses, which has been outlawed in most Muslim nations..They told me they would not, because Rushdie.s book does not deny the Holocaust. They also objected to my use of a book that has been banned in several countries. My position is that many banned books turn out later to be literary classics. The Soviet Union banned Orwell.s novel 1984. England banned Orwell.s Animal Farm, plus Adam Smith.s The Wealth of Nations. America banned Harriet Beecher Stowe.s anti-slavery book Uncle Tom.s Cabin. Iran banned Vladimir Nabokov.s novel Lolita. Is America the same as the Islamofascists?..That.s a clever argument,. Dershowitz says, .but none of those books killed six million people. Moreover, a book like Rushdies. Satanic Verses merely questions theology and belief, while Zundel.s book is a hate-filled assault on well-documented truth..

Aljiem submitted a formal apology, and offered to rewrite the paper without the citation, but dean Saul Rubin said the review board.s decision was final, and was out of his hands..I can see the board.s point,. Rubin explains. .When a person commits a robbery, do we excuse her merely because she says she.s sorry? As an aspiring criminal attorney, Ms. Aljiem surely realizes that all of us must take personal responsibility for our actions.. After her expulsion, Aljiem applied to other law schools in the hope of finishing her education, but she says they all rejected her because of the incident at Harvard..Now I have no way to pay back my school loans. Harvard wants to make an example of me. They also want to separate Muslims from the rest of American society by creating the illusion that only Muslims deserve to be attacked. In reality, many people are attacked; not just Muslims. ..That.s a typical blame-the-victim response,. Dershowitz says. .Whenever hate is exposed, its perpetrators claim that their people are singled out as a group for unfair treatment. This is only my opinion, but it seems to me that all Muslims over-generalize, especially about Jews. Also, it is absurd for Ms. Aljiem to claim that only Muslims are held accountable. Is Zundel, the book.s author, a Muslim? We see this kind of illogic and selective memory all the time. Frankly, I find it hypocritical..Aljiem plans to sue the university law school to reinstate her academic status. Representing the law school will be a team led Alan Dershowitz, who was not part of the review board.

5.The left among us like victimhood

Emanuele OttolenghiJewish Chronicle28/09/2007

In an essay published in the Jewish magazine Tikkun last January, BertellOllman, one of the world's best-known Marxist theorists, recounted how,on his way into the operating room, he realised that if he did notsurvive his surgery, he would die a Jew. The prospect was so unsettlingthat, once healed, he wrote his Letter of resignation from the Jewishpeople. The reasons were Zionism, Israel, and the support its policiesenjoy from other Jews.

Ollman might yet reconsider, but for that to happen, Jews would have toembrace his own version of Jewish identity. Paraphrasing a Lenny Brucejoke, he said: Noam Chomsky, Mordechai Vanunu and Edward Said are Jewish. Elie Wiesel is goyish. So, too, all `Jewish' neo-cons. Socialism and communism are Jewish. Sharon and Zionism are very goyish. And, who knows, if this reading of Judaism were to take hold, I may one day apply for readmission to the Jewish people.

Of Ollman's trinity, Chomsky is the only halachic Jew, but he qualifiesmore for his anti-Israel venom than for his devotion to his ancestry'straditions. Vanunu is a convert to Anglicanism and his alienation goes asfar as refusing to speak Hebrew, his mother tongue. Said was not Jewish,though he was the darling of many anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals.

So what makes Chomsky, Vanunu and Said "authentic" Jews, then? ForOllman, it's their adherence to a political orthodoxy: being Jewishequals being a certain type of progressive intellectual.

Ollman may sound outlandish. But he is not alone. Since the beginning ofthe second intifada in September 2000, prominent Jews criticising Israelhave become louder and more assertive. Increasingly frequently, they feelit is not enough to denounce Israel's policies publicly - they must do so"as Jews". And going even further, they routinely renounce Israel itselfas part of their identity, and appeal to other Jews to do the same. Insome cases, despite the secularism of their proponents, these appealsfeature the salvation language of Christianity.

Israel's creation is dubbed "original sin", or derided as not exactly "animmaculate conception". Jews, formerly "blinded" by the Zionistnarrative, should "see the truth" and forgo Zionism as a "redeeming" actthat will ensure "justice and reconciliation" with Palestinians. And soon.

What is behind this trend?

It started with Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm who suggested, long ago,that Jewish identity need not include religion, language, culture,tradition, historic background, kinship, or what he deemed "a certainattitude toward the Jewish state". That doesn't leave much, other thanbeing part of the left.

The change was really spelled out, though, in late 2001, when the Italiancolumnist Barbara Spinelli wrote that today's ultra-nationalist Israelconstitutes nothing less than a "scandal". And it is a scandal, aboveall, for Jews themselves - since, as everyone knows, Jews are thequintessential victims of modern nationalism (nationalism being, forSpinelli as other likeminded intellectuals, virtually coterminous withNazism). It follows, then, that Jews everywhere have a special duty tospeak out against Israel, to apologise to its victims, and to do sopublicly.

"If one thing is missing in Judaism," Spinelli wrote, "this is preciselyit: a mea culpa vis-a-vis the peoples and individuals who had to pay theprice of blood and exile to allow Israel to exist." She called upon worldJewry to undertake such an act of contrition forthwith: If the initiative does not come from Jerusalem then it should start in the diaspora, where so many Jews live a double and contradictory loyalty: to Israel, and to the state they belong to and vote in. A solemn mea culpa, proclaimed from the scattered communities in the West.

No one can accuse Jewish intellectuals of being deaf to these calls. Forthe most part, those answering them have been not the long-term, all-out,rabid haters of Israel, who need no excuse and waste no pieties inreviling the Jewish state. Our heroes are of a somewhat differentcomplexion. Not only do they tend to speak more circumspectly but, withwhatever degree of disingenuousness, they cloak their hostility to Jewishnationalism (ie Israel) in the mantle of solicitude for, precisely, thegood name of Jews and Judaism.

In the Guardian of August 8 2002, 45 Jewish signatories, in a widelyhailed act of public abjuration, repudiated their right of return to theJewish state on account of its allegedly racist policies. Since thestatement's original publication, over 80 more individuals from aroundthe world joined their ranks. One of the organisers subsequentlyexplained that what motivated him to act was the "pitiless violence" ofhis "blood relatives", ie the Israeli people - the "violence", as he putit, of the "traumatised former victim, clinging to past wounds fromgeneration unto generation". His goal was to save his fellow Jews fromthemselves.

In a similar vein, Israeli academic Bernard Avishai wrote a piece in 2005entitled Saving Israel from itself - another Samaritan, no doubt. AndBritish-born historian Tony Judt, having chastised Israel for its"immature" behaviour, has recommended that Israel "converts" - though hestopped short of providing aspergillums.

The publicity given to this and similar initiatives by European Jews,abetted in some cases by their Israeli counterparts, has been extensive.There was tremendous excitement in Europe in 2002 over the declaration by99 Israeli academics that their government was planning an imminent"fully fledged ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinian people (a charge thatwas not withdrawn when the atrocity failed to occur), and again over therefusal of a few hundred Israeli army reservists to serve in theterritories.

There was even greater excitement when several European Jewish academicsturned up among the instigators of a movement to boycott Israeli academicinstitutions, and yet again when Jewish politicians such as GeraldKaufman, Oona King and South Africa's Ronnie Kasrils called for theboycott of Israeli commercial products. All three used similar rhetoric:they were duty-bound, "as Jews", to denounce Israel. Kasrils, forexample, said that: "As a person who was born Jewish, I am morallyobliged to speak out against what is being done by the Zionist state ofIsrael to the Palestinian people."

Many others have likewise seen it as their specifically Jewish duty todenounce Israel. Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli former tank commander,explained his support for Israel divestment by saying that the call"reflects true loyalty both to Israel's peaceful existence and to thehighest Jewish values".

And to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2005, Anthony Lipmannissued just the kind of mea culpa for which Spinelli called. The son of aHolocaust survivor, albeit a convert to Christianity and an active memberof the Church of England, Lipmann was moved temporarily to reclaim hispatrimony. Writing in The Spectator under the title How I Became a Jew,he averred that the "little band" of Holocaust survivors in Europe has a terrible responsibility - to live well in the name of those who did not live and to discourage the building of walls and bulldozing of villages. Even more than this, they - and all Jews - need to be the voice of conscience that will prevent Israel from adopting the mantle of oppressor, and to reject the label "antisemite" for those who speak out against Israel's policies in the occupied territories.

Then there's Jacqueline Rose, an academic whose admiration for EdwardSaid is inversely proportional to her knowledge of Zionist history. Inher book The Question of Zion (2005) - dedicated to Said - Rose undertookto save Judaism itself from the curse of nationalism. "What is it," sheasks, "about the coming into being of this nation [Israel] and the[Zionist] movement out of which it was born, that allowed it - and stillallows it - to shed the burdens of its own history, and so flagrantly toblind itself?"

Zionism, she concluded, has to be seen not as the fulfilment of anage-old Jewish dream but as the out-and-out betrayal of Jewish historyand the Jewish heritage, an adoption of all that is, historically andmorally, un-Jewish.

Can Judaism be saved? Yes, Rose and others assure us, but only by athorough-going renunciation of Zionism. As anti-Zionist polemicistMichael Neumann writes, Jewish detractors of Israel such as Uri Avneryand Noam Chomsky "are all Jewish. Their focus on Israel is no evidence ofdouble standards, but of where they feel their responsibilities lie."

For Neumann, as for Rose, these voices are needed more than ever today,during the Jews' "dark night of the soul", as Rose calls it, because, inNeumann's words, "Israel's current policies are themselves a threat toJews and Israelis everywhere".

That's why Jews must speak out against Israel, continues Neumann: "Thecase for Jewish complicity [in Israel's crimes] seems much stronger thanthe case for German complicity [in the Holocaust]. If many Jews spokeout, it would have an enormous effect."

Presumably, by this Neumann means to imply that wartime Germans werepowerless victims of Hitler. Perhaps he'd go on to say, as it logicallyfollows, that they were just "obeying orders".

And so Jews line up to comply, as if condemning Israel in the publicsquare was a secular surrogate to the Vidui, or Yom Kippur confession. Inan op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, Oxford historian Avi Shlaimjustified his denunciation of Zionism by appealing to a faith he neverfelt much connection to: "One of the greatest accolades in Judaism," heinstructed his readers, "is to be a rodef shalom, a seeker of peace."That's why he sincerely believed that "Israel today is the real enemy ofthe Jews".

Calls abound for Jews to repent, condemn Israel, hear the gospel ofanti-Zionism and convert to a new, exciting form of Judaism, based moreon Karl Marx and Rosa Luxembourg than Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion.So is the rush to heed them. With antisemitism rising across Europealongside violence in the Middle East, Jews have been under pressure forseveral years now. Instead of getting sympathy for the harassment theyare subjected to, Jews have earned only scorn for their refusal todenounce Israel first.

That is the sad truth - one that anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals, withtheir demonising rhetoric against Israel and their patronising attitudetowards fellow Jews, have irresponsibly abetted. To shield themselvesfrom shame and abuse, Jews are asked to discard Israel from their owncollective identity. This step, and an active denunciation of Israel asthe antithesis of progressive and Jewish values (themselves, in thisvision, synonymous with one another), will gain them full acceptance.Scores of Jews, especially among the progressive intellectuals, indeedcomply in public acts of mea culpa, thus lending an alibi to antisemitesand gentrifying anti-Jewish prejudice in the process.

A simple explanation is at hand for this: it is lonely, on the left, whenyou step out of line. And the party line, when it comes to Israel and theJews, is that one can express a proud Jewish identity only through theexperience of suffering and victimisation from the past, which theHolocaust has come to embody above all. The Jew as a victim and as awitness of the quintessential, archetypal experience of suffering emergesas the positive Jewish role-model, in sharp contrast to the pro-Israel oreven Zionist Jew, who is chastised for having betrayed both universalvalues and what is seen as the authentic Jew. Again, to borrow fromChristian terminology, the Jew as the sacrificial lamb, the Agnus Dei, iswhat we are being asked to be.

That's why so many Jews, spiteful of their faith and ashamed of Zionism'saccomplishments as a society which rejects the role of the victim, wishIsrael away. For them, it was so much better before Zionism, when wecould still say, with some self-righteousness, S'iz shver tsu zayn a Yid- it is hard to be a Jew!

Emanuele Ottolenghi is the director of the Transatlantic Institute andauthor of Autodafe: Europe, the Jews and Anti-Semitism